#BlackExcellence: Three African-American Students Selected As 2019 Rhodes Scholars

“This year’s American Rhodes Scholars—independently elected by 16 committees around the country meeting simultaneously—once again reflect the extraordinary diversity that characterizes the United States,” says Elliot F. Gerson, American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust.

Black students across the country are continuing to display excellence in the realm of academia. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, three African-American students were selected as 2019 Rhodes Scholars.

The students are three of 32 chosen by the Rhodes Trust to be granted graduate scholarships to further their education at the England-based Oxford University, the news outlet writes. They were picked from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants. Amongst the Black students who received the honor are Lia Petrose, a University of Pittsburgh alumna who studied economics and neuroscience and minored in chemistry, University of Pennsylvania senior Anea B. Moore who is studying law and Africana studies, and Austin T. Hughes from the University of Iowa who is currently majoring in theatre arts, creative writing and literature and Japanese linguistics.

All three students have used their knowledge to make an impact in their local communities and beyond. Petrose led a research project in Malawi surrounding the economics of health information systems, Moore has explored how race, class, and gentrification are intertwined through her research, and Hughes has received several awards for his creative writing.

“This year’s American Rhodes Scholars—independently elected by 16 committees around the country meeting simultaneously—once again reflect the extraordinary diversity that characterizes the United States,” said Elliot F. Gerson, American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, in a statement. “These Scholars plan to study a wide range of fields across the social sciences, biological and medical sciences, physical sciences and mathematics, and the humanities. They are certain to enrich our future.”

The Rhodes Trust has come a long way when it comes to the representation of Black scholars. According to the news outlet, the first African-American to receive a scholarship was philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke in 1907. In 2017, 10 Black students were named Rhodes scholars.

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This is a joke. Do you even know what it means to be an HBCU? Your ancestors fought for schools like Lincoln. Your organization was founded on an HBCU so why disrespect your founders by calling a white institution an HBCU joking or not? https://t.co/hAg4O8GwLO

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I’m tired of y’all talking about all this hbcu vs pwi shit, stfu. What y’all fail to realize is that a lot of black people at pwi’s wanted to go to hbcu’s. Embrace both experience, it doesn’t define your blackness, both can actually enhance it.

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These Mizzou students just don't know. An HBCU isn't something to "joke" about. You chose that PWI so stick with it and never compare it to an HBCU. Blood, sweat, tears, & people's last dollars were put into our institutions to allow Black people to earn an education.

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I never understood why they come for us so hard when they cafeteria feeding them dog food and they inhaling mold in they dorms for 4 years. You would think they would have bigger issues then you calling Mizzou an HBCU 🤷🏾‍♀️

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What Is A Black College? Missouri Tweet Reignites PWI vs. HBCU Debate

It all started off innocently enough with a simple minute-long video showing an all-Black group of college students getting turned up to the Nth degree at an amazing party where everybody was dancing as hard as they possibly could. The video was tweeted Thursday night from the Twitter account belonging to Alpha Phi Alpha's Zeta Alpha Chapter at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) and accompanied by a brief message of encouragement.
"'MAKE MIZZOU GREAT AGAIN,'" the tweet said with an emoji of someone yelling. "Keep this same energy, see y’all next time."
https://twitter.com/MizzouAlphas/status/1070905895658405888
Liked hundreds of times, the tweet from the historically Black fraternity was an obvious play on words to reimagine the president's divisive motto in a more positive light. But it just took one response to that tweet, in particular, to turn things from what was seemingly meant to be a light-hearted moment of levity to a contentious debate between predominately white institutions (PWIs) and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
https://twitter.com/tygardner__/status/1071193353113489408
Yep, you read right. The retweet from @tygardner__ referred to Mizzou as an HBCU, implying that all it takes is a concentrated group of college students who are Black to transform any campus into a Black college, historical designations be damned.
The notion isn't remotely new, as PWIs and HBCUs don't have too much in common beyond being institutions of higher learning for mostly young adults. Instead, it's all about the experience. At an HBCU, culture is everywhere and can many times culminate in the type of experience shown at the Alpha party in the video above.
Blavity even published an article with the headline, "I went to a PWI and still had a black college experience."
You may recall that the University of Missouri's main campus in Columbia is the same place where Black student activists protested racism in the administration, resulting in the school's president tendering his resignation in 2015. Even though Black student enrollment fell following that ugly episode, Mizzou's Black population was the second-largest racial denomination on campus behind white students.
Still, according to the FAMUan, the student news outlet at Florida A&M University, an HBCU, "Race may seem like the underlying difference between HBCUs and PWIs, but the day-to-day interactions between professors and students during fundamental learning is what is setting these two institutions apart."
There is also the unproven idea that PWIs are intrinsically better than HBCU, but many students at Black colleges can believe the opposite. It's a vicious, neverending cycle of an argument that has no definite correct answer, except for maybe the one encouraging PWIs and HBCUs to "create partnerships, not competition."
@tygrdner__ later responded that his HBCU tweet was only meant as a joke, but it was too late to extinguish the social media fire that was ignited from the tweet, showing there are still some deep-seated issues certain folks need to work through when talking about higher learning environments.
https://twitter.com/tygardner__/status/1071193859621818368
All it takes is one tweet to be shared a bunch of times to get something to become viral, and on Friday night it seemed all of Black Twitter was in its feelings over what was construed as HBCU slander.
Take a look at some of the tweets below to give you a sense of the time, energy and passion evoked from discussing what seemed to be a sensitive topic.